Field processing involves choosing which fields are used in your report and how those fields appear. The fields you select can appear as they are, or they can be used to derive fields for the report. In addition, you can specify how you want to use these fields (for instance, sorted or totalled) and whether you want to modify the default presentation format.
When you select option 3 - Field processing, a screen appears, showing the fields processed by the program:
This screen keeps track of the fields you have selected for use in your program and gives you a summary of the options specified for them.
Press <Enter> to add a new field to the program.
You are then presented with the following screen of questions. You may not need to answer all of them, depending on the field you are processing. Report Writer does its best to supply default answers wherever possible, by drawing on its information about your database. Help messages are available throughout. Click on the appropriate area in the illustration below to pop up further information on each question. Note that the Total field and Local break only descriptions are too long for pop-up display, so are treated as separate topics; clicking on these areas will jump to those topics.
Once you have answered the questions which apply to the field, you are returned to the list of fields which you have selected for use in your program. On the menu bar at the bottom of the screen, the Format option is highlighted.